Frustrated by a lack of informed and honest review websites covering a wide range of electronic music, I write them myself.

Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Banco de Gaia - Igizeh

Six Degrees Records: 2000

Anyone recall hearing The Prodigy's Fat Of The Land for the first time? The initial anticipation of new music from an act you enjoy, but feeling content in the assumption they couldn't surprise you any longer? Remember how Smack My Bitch Up utterly abolished those preconceived notions? If you're feelin' what I'm preachin' here, my friends, then you'll have an inclining of how I reacted to hearing Seti I on Banco de Gaia's fifth album.

I'm by no means comparing the two tracks, as they're worlds apart (although they do both make use of an ethnic vocalization). In terms of how they kicked off their respective albums, however, and how they represent everything good about the producers behind them, they're quite similar. At first ear-glance, Seti I works a slow-building atmosphere with oodles of nature samples and chants. A stomping rhythm emerges, and a ridiculously catchy vocal hook joins in. For the duration, this tune absolutely gets the blood pumping. I don't think Toby Marks has ever opened another album stronger than Igizeh, yet Seti I is barely known; heck, it didn't even make it to his 10 Years retrospective or other such collections. So, um, I guess the Prodigy comparison ends there.

Since Seti I wasn’t a single from an album that saw at least two, Igizeh must be an astounding album. Eh, it's good, but not that good. It's actually a rather curious one when you consider the context it came out in. As odd as it sounds, the album finds Marks doing a fair bit of bandwagon jumping, yet somehow maintaining his distinctive sound throughout. The first single, Obsidian, appears to borrow quite a bit from progressive trance, with the (barely comprehensible) vocals from Jennifer Folker lending it further to something far more commercial than you'd ever expect from Banco de Gaia (until You Are Here anyway). One could say the same about the new version of Glove Puppet, a dead-ringer and mint take on trip-hop. Meanwhile, second-single How Much Reality Can You Take has elements of big beat, a notion not gone unnoticed by Jack Dangers when he remixed the tune.

Those were the popular genres of the time (or from a couple years back anyway), but Igizeh features further musical adoption than that. Fake It Till You Make It finds Marks and company going about as full-on Pink Floyd as they ever did back in those days. Gizeh adds Moog funk to their characteristic grand musical builds (Egyptian slave revolutions never sounded so epic!). And B2 sounds like, well, Banco de Gaia did during the early ambient dub days, but with a fresh year-2000 sheen.

So in a roundabout way, Igizeh might have ended up being Banco's most accessible album, but those proggy world-beat attributes didn't quite make it so. The style Marks' project cultivates keeps this firmly on the underground side of music, though as far as 'electronica' albums go, it's remarkably diverse. A bit like that Prodigy album, come to think of it.